Hingham architect is making his mark at MIT

The Building 10 dome is modeled after the Pantheon in Rome, and it’s the dome that appears on most of MIT’s iconic pictures, class rings, and publicity material. Directly underneath the dome, on Building 10’s fifth floor, lies a 75-foot rotunda housing the Barker Engineering Library’s reading room. ...

Anyone familiar with houses in Hingham appreciates how buildings change through time, and some of the forces that drive the change. “Some old houses are completely updated,” said Susanna Hunt, a realtor with Coldwell Banker in Hingham. “Some are the house that Jack built. A lot of houses started out as useful to their time period — they had small rooms so you could heat them, then got added onto here or there. The trend now is to have big spaces, while preserving the grandeur of the original architecture.”

The same trend toward restoring original architecture from the vicissitudes of passing necessity is occurring at MIT, and that effort has been spearheaded by Hingham resident, architect Gary Tondorf-Dick working in conjunction with colleagues in the MIT Department of Facilities. He has just completed one of his major projects, the renovation of the Great Dome of Building 10.

The Building 10 dome is modeled after the Pantheon in Rome, and it’s the dome that appears on most of MIT’s iconic pictures, class rings, and publicity material. Directly underneath the dome, on Building 10’s fifth floor, lies a 75-foot rotunda housing the Barker Engineering Library’s reading room. Few people enjoyed using it, and those who did seemed resigned to it being dark and disheartening. People called it the Barker bat cave.

“Around the end of 2006, beginning of 2007, I joined MIT after working in the private sector for years,” he recalled. “When I came on, one of my responsibility areas was the libraries.”

When Tondorf-Dick toured the Barker, he quickly understood why the library had its off-putting nickname. It had no natural light to speak of, which was, said Tondorf-Dick, “ … the antithesis of what the original architecture should be.”

Like the Pantheon, the Building 10 dome has an oculus, a 27-foot circular opening at the top of the dome. Unlike the Pantheon, the Building 10 dome’s oculus was never open to the elements. Its skylight had 1,042 glass tiles arranged in square patterns of 36 glass blocks in arrays above a concentric circle diffused daylight in the rotunda ceiling below. These glass tiles had patterns embossed within them to focus and concentrate the light, much as the lights in lighthouses do.

But during World War II, this huge oculus was covered to prevent the skylight from attracting potential enemy bombardment. The oculus was uncovered briefly in the 1950s, but a plastic, disc-shaped drop ceiling, also installed in the 1950s, hid it. “It looked like a spaceship 15 feet above your head,” Tondorf-Dick said. “Most people didn’t even know that there was a skylight up there. The ceiling also obscured the details on the columns around the dome.” The ceiling, in effect, dropped low enough to hide the tops of the columns from most viewpoints around the reading room.

The need for more environmental controls like air conditioning and heating, installed on the higher floors, further blocked access to natural light, which required more artificial lights on the drop ceiling. The reading room space also suffered from being painted a monochromatic “MIT white” and from having entrance restricted through reference rooms rather than directly into the main rotunda.

Page 2 of 3 - “Each of these renovations served a purpose at the time,” Tondorf-Dick said. “But we wanted to bring the dome back as it was originally intended. Natural light is so beautiful and dynamic.”

That plan required years of work. Tondorf-Dick called the first one and a half the research phase. “We had to peel back layers of renovations and assess what was there, and figure out a strategy to change it.”

He quickly discovered that some of the technology used to build the dome had changed or become a dying art. Many old skills had been lost. First among these was the ability to make the molds for those 1,042 glass blocks and then determine the correct chemistry of the glass itself. The original glass had turned amethyst from exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. The question Tondorf-Dick had was whether the amethyst color was original or not.

“Well, I figured out that I was at MIT, and so I walked down the hall to see some chemistry and materials science professors, and they figured out that the glass had been clear once. The manganese in it to make it clear had gradually turned it amethyst.” Tondorf-Dick asked these professors, artisans and engineers how to get a better mix so the glass would remain stable, clear, because, “ … it’s the glass that brings light into the dark.”

Tondorf-Dick said that he had to find artisans who could correctly replicate the glass formula, another who could create molds for the glass to match the original design, and a third group who could mass produce them.

While they were doing their work, Tondorf-Dick, working with plaster and paint restoration specialists John Canning and Sons, rediscovered references to the dome’s original colors. After considerable research, he determined the seven different shades of off-white, incorporating yellow and brown tones, as well as a green that resembles oxidized bronze, that made up the palette.

The acoustics of the rotunda also mattered to Tondorf-Dick. “All rotundas have a problem with echo,” he said. “We developed a customizable sound absorption system that the librarians can adjust.”

Construction and restoration took another couple years. The library remained open during the time. The project finished last month. Now the glass tiles in the oculus bring extra light into the rotunda below. A second glass structure, with an interesting design of concentric circles and spokes, diffuses the light coming in from the oculus so that library patrons can use computer screens without glare. High-efficiency lights positioned above the higher band of acanthus leaves also illuminate the dome, and lights between the columns ringing the rotunda add extra, warmer light. With the improved lighting and attractive color scheme, the space has become beautiful and inviting.

“We’re getting great feedback,” Tondorf-Dick said. “They love it. You can’t find a seat. That people are using it, that’s the best thing for me.”

Page 3 of 3 - Tondorf-Dick won’t take all the credit for working through the renovation planning and implementation. He also credits Dick Amster, who is Director of Campus Planning, Design, Engineering and Construction at MIT for support and guidance, his colleagues in Facilities Project Management, the SGH design and Shawmut construction team and the librarians at the Barker Library, who gave him good feedback on their needs so he could make the renovation not only architecturally inviting, but also useful for current times.

“I’m fascinated by the continuum of history,” Tondorf-Dick said. “How the past sets the stage for the future, and how some places keep the character of the past intact, like all those houses in Glad Tidings, down Main Street. It could be 100 to 150 years ago. Old Ship, too, has kept its English colonial character.”

His next project at MIT will involve renovating the limestone buildings that surround Building 10 and front Memorial Drive and Massachusetts Avenue. He is starting with Building 2 and improving its energy efficiency, while preserving the original architectural character of the building.